Trance

Post-Modern-Femi-Noir
or
I See London, I See Trance

Danny Boyle has been on something of a tear lately.  His last couple films have been popular show-cases of how diverse and direct his story-telling skills can be now, and resonant with audiences.  And yet none of his recent films should have "worked:"  Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire's combination of pop culture, Bollywood, gangsterism and classic literature; 127 Hours' brutal and claustrophobic story about a man  who cuts off his own arm, which still manages to be uplifting and even inspiring.  Boyle is now a household name and an A-list director thanks to Slumdog.  His previous film, the sardonic sci-fi film Sunshine did not attract an audience, nor did his kids' film Millions (despite being delightful, both for kids and adults).  His new prestige made him the natural choice to become the creative director for last year's London Olympics.

It was while working on them that the opportunity came to take a break, and he rushed this film, Trance, into production—not that you could tell, it's full of his multi-media eclecticism that at times can run out of control.  The script had already been directed (by its writer Joe Aherne) as a TV movie in 2001.  It's a heist film with several twists, and, as Doyle has said in interviews, it was a dark tonic to the celebratory work he was doing for the Games.

We are introduced to the movie by Simon (James McAvoy) who gives us a brief art history lesson on particular paintings and their peculiarities.  But one thing about this ersatz collection sets them apart; "You haven't seen them because they've been stolen."  Simon works as an art auctioneer and walks us through a brief summary of audacious art thefts, and the precautions that auction houses take to protect their commodities.  "Lesson number one," though, is "don't be a hero.  No work of art is worth a human life." 

"Rule No. 1: Don't Be a Hero."

It's a lesson he should take to heart.  A robbery does take place, and true to instructions, Simon isn't a hero--he's in on it, the job's "inside man.'  But, in the shell-game of keeping up appearances, he is given a severe head trauma, and (isn't this a pretty picture?) can't remember what he did with the painting.    This is, of course, quite upsetting to the ringleader, Franck (Vincent Cassell), who tries to extract the information in the typical gangster fashion (old fashioned threats of death, disfigurement, and the actual pulling out of  fingernails).  Nothing breaks through Simon's personal pentimento.

Go to Plan B.  They send Simon to hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson), who's had quite a success breaking addictions, changing lives and messing with heads.  It's the latter skill that comes in good stead as she quickly realizes that Simon is not just a guy in need of finding his car-keys, but may be in league with the devil.  Finding his memory might make him a memory.

Doyle's good at messing with heads, as well, as Trance proves fairly quickly. 

Under his hypnotherapy, loyalties are tested (particularly the audience's), and no matter what subject matter on screen, whether grisly or enticing, it's tough to take your eyes off the screen.  Pretty soon you're not sure what's real, what's illusion...or (finally) what's going on.  Some neat tricks are played, expectations are shattered, but all to the service of a script that isn't all that great.  One can appreciate the twists and turns and diversions, and the slightly feminist slant that the movie tilts the traditional role of the femme fatale in film noir.  But, ultimately the biggest trick that's pulled is the illusion that a better movie is happening.  For all the visual pyrotechnics and the reality warping manipulation of the audience, Trance isn't that good a movie, and unconsciously or consciously, a trifle.

Trance is a Rental.

Goya's Witches in the Air—the "MacGuffin" of the movie

Death Proof

"Death Proof" (Quentin Tarantino, 2007) Part of the "Grindhouse" doube-bill imagined by Robert Rodriguez and Tarantino in 2007. Rodriguez's feature "Planet Terror" was such an object of loathing on my part that I was in no hurry to see Tarentino's half, not being a fan of Tarantino's body of work, but liking a couple of his films.

Goes to show you. Don't take anything for granted.

"Death Proof" is such a luxurious exercise in emulating "bad girl" exploitation movies that it manages to rise above the material and actually prove a well-constructed, well-considered and deliriously fine thrill-ride. It's so good, that it fails miserably at its intention of posing as a B-movie.

This is a problem?

Directed and photographed by Tarantino (and very well, as he gets shots that look extremely dangerous to achieve), the flick tells the story of Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) who targets girls in cars for murderous collisions. Done in long, long disciplined takes the girl-packs are followed through their paces by the audience and stalking Mike: first, a bevy of Austin, Texas girl-friends of morning DJ Jungle Jill (Sydney Poitier) who proceed to get wasted and meet up Mike on a dark street; then, a clutch of movie-crew women in Tennesee led by hair-stylist Kim (Rosario Dawson), and a couple of stunt women. This scenario is in marked contrast to the first, which ended in an orgiastic car-crash, this second is a white-knuckle chase.

It could be seen as a "Don't Drink and Drive" warning. It could be a "girl-power" statement (it certainly is that). It could be a flipped digit to those all-powerful-stalker movies. But whatever it is, Tarentino pulls out all the action stops, creating some of the most reckless sequences put on film (the stunt Union must love him), with techniques borrowed from a number of acknowledged directors in the credits.

It could also be a love letter to stunt-woman Zoe Bell (the credits say "Zoë Bell as Herself"). Bell, who was the stunt double for "Xena: Warrior Princess" and did the elaborate "Bride" stunt sequences for "Kill Bill" does some extremely agitating work in "Death-Proof," as an Australian stunt-woman who is in the unfortunate position of riding the hood of a car when the women encounter Stuntman Mike on a lonely (and seemingly endless) stretch of dirt road. No, you haven't seen anything like it.

Now, there are some irritating things: a couple of the actresses (Rose McGowan and Tracie Thoms) don't know sub-tle acting techniques—and neither does Tarantino in another of his grand-standing cameos—but Bell, Russell and Dawson compensate mightily doing great work. There's a breaking of the fourth wall that's a little too cute and creepy. Tarantino overdoes the false scratches and imperfections to try and achieve an old movie effect (at one point, an entire reel is in black and white), a bit of dialogue is repeated in a bad edit (anyone who could make a film this good wouldn't make that mistake). But these are minor considerations in great work.

In my laceration of "Planet Terror," I wrote about the aspirations of artists trying to recreate the "crap of their youth," which they enjoyed, in an attempt to recreate the experience for a new generation:

I know what they were going for in "Grindhouse." They were trying to go back to the "C"-movie days of double-bill films that tried to eke out a profit by appealing to the lowest common denominator--the kids-and-cretins-circuit—something that Dimension Films,"Grindhouse's" distributor, routinely does, as well. Some of the greatest directors of movies—some of the brightest—honed their craft in the AIP's and worse. But once they got their chops, they stopped making crap. They aspired. They wanted more. Only someone of limited creativity (or a moron...or a deeply cynical artist) would knowingly aspire to garbage, and so reluctantly, I'm bestowing that label to Robert Rodriguez--the "deeply cynical artist" one, as he's very creative, and certainly not a moron. Left to his own devices, Rodriguez can do some entertaining work--the El Mariachi films, the "Spy Kids" films, and they're made with an economy that's something short of miraculous--but team him with his mentor, Quentin Tarantino and it all turns to shit (QT has a mercifully brief role in "Planet Terror," as an over-acting rapist, where he proves, once again, that he's the male equivalent of Pia Zadora). The guy's got the chops, no doubt about it. But he has one thing missing in his many talents--taste. They don't teach that at film school, and you can't get it at the video store. "Taste" is what you get when you aspire, and it can even be with the schlockiest material known to man ("Touch of Evil," "Psycho," "The Godfather"...I can go on and on about artists who reached to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear), but to revel in schlock, to aspire to it...and have the results be so ...marginal, so ...bad, and not even in a funny way, but pitiable, well, you start to wonder what it is you saw in these guys before.

Tarantino saw the schlock, loved it, and in his attempt to recreate it, surpassed it, improved it, and passed along his love to the audience, validating it. He got the formula exactly right.

Bravo.

Bravo and "wow." *

Good Will Hunting.
Kurt Russell breaks a lot of things in "Death-Proof" including the "Fourth Wall."

* Yeah, yeah—loved it, sure. But, lest you go rushing out expecting a masterpiece of art, this caveat: It's an exploitation film. That means there's going to be something that offends...well, just about everybody (including folks who get off on exploitation films!) It's just part of the Grand Scheme of "Death Proof."

(Wilhelm alert @ 00:51:23)

Alexander

"Alexander" (Oliver Stone, 2004) In the two-way race getting the story of Alexander the Great to the screen between Baz Luhrmann and Oliver Stone, the latter got there first, having worked on a screen-play since 1989. Luhrmann's announcement of an "Alexander" project was probably just the thing Stone's film needed to get off the ground, and his thorough planning shows (historical inaccuracies aside): this is one of Stone's deftest film--a combination of his macho liberal ethics and his pre-disposition to turn everything into braying Myth. Here he's dealing with Gods and Titans and men who reach beyond their grasp, and if one thinks this one has a political agenda talking about a King wanting to chase his Persian prey into the mountains, you're only scanning the surface for easy targets.*

Stone's going for epic statements here of dreamers and the pains they inflict on Society** and a pretty good tying up of some major themes in several of his films without descending into his fall-back of the "Good and Bad Fathers of our Soul." Oh, there is familial stress going on constantly with two of the more watchable stars as Alexander's warring father and mother King Phillip and Olympias (Val Kilmer and Angelina Jolie***). Their battles for the betterment of Alexander (Colin Farrell) make up the intrigue that Stone keeps flashing back to once Alexander reaches Babylon and established his first Alexandria city-state. But the main focus is Alexander and his battles from Ireland**** Macedonia to Persia to India, each one given their own specific vantage point. The desert combat in Persia is given a neat over-view by a mythic hawk, the latest in a long line of familiars haunting Stone protagonists. The India battle is an epic jungle gore-fest between man and beast that turns into a red nightmare, but is affectionately begun with an old-time movie iris-out.

The film is so full of "rules of thumb," you begin to wonder if there's not a training manual with the thing ("A commander never gives an order he wouldn't carry out himself," "Don't surrender your reason to passion," "Moderation in all things" and the film's mantra "Fortune favors the bold"), and as gritty as Stone makes it (and there's a lot of blood-spatter flying through the battle scenes), it has the pristine quality of those Hollywood sword-and-sandal epics where even the Persian city of Babylon seems immaculately free of dust. Stone seemed inspired by the look of "The Lord of the Rings" and its way around a vast story-line, but seems to favor his Myths well-scrubbed.

Still, it's an epic that was filmed in 93 days, despite far-flung locations and looks miraculous despite the tight schedule. For all the things that could conceivably have gone wrong, Stone's Cecil B. DeMille styled dream project managed a lot of things right.

* Stone's "W." biography would show up at the end of 2008, looking rushed and a little wasted and without much to say. You can't satirize a political satire, and the joke ceased being funny a long time ago.

** In an odd post-mortem, Alexander's kinsman Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins) supposes that Societies are inspired by dreamers and then exhausted by them to the point of wishing them failure, if not death. That's an interesting thought coming from Mr. Conspiracy Theory. Stone's also one of those liberals who likes to include all of us to enjoy his guilt—"It's all out faults." Hey, speak for yourself, mack!

*** Stone is particularly praise-worthy of his actors on the commentary track of this film and with good cause--Farrell shows off the promise that his over-hyped career has only suggested, Kilmer is as boisterously good as he's been in years, and Jolie again shows why she's one of the most commanding actors on the screen these days. She has a line reading ("Loves. Loves!") that wheels between conflicting emotions with such quick-silver speed that it nearly whips your head around. One would be tempted to see that she's the latter day Ava Gardner if not for one thing—she's a better actor than Gardner. Stone loves a touch of madness in his actors. Jolie is his perfect match.

**** Farrell doesn't disguise his Irish accent, and the kid who plays him (very well) in the early sections of the movie does a fair register of Farrell's brogue. But most of the actors have Irish accents that at times is distracting, but somehow seems fitting for the folk-tale blarney with which Stone tells the story. You go with it, as it feels right. Kilmer's accent is American. Jolie's is faux-Greek.

Eagle Eye

"Where's LaBoeuf?"

Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) has just had $71,500 dropped into his bank account. Giddily, he snatches up the money, runs home, and pays two months rent in advance. The landlady mentions something about all the boxes. Jerry spins inside, turns on the light, and finds he's walked into a nightmare--crates of sensitive materials and bomb-making equipment, pistols, rifles, night-vison goggles, F-16 training manuals...oh, and several tons of ammonium nitrate--enough to level another Oklahoma municipal building.

The moment is so well-staged that it evokes an audience-wide "Woh!"

His cell phone rings. A female voice says, "The FBI will be at your apartment in thirty seconds. Get out now!" He hasn't learned to move fast enough yet.

Dedicated mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) has just shipped her son on a band-trip to Washington D.C. and is relaxing for some girl-talk and a boiler-maker when she gets a phone call. A female voice tells her to go outside and look at the window of the McDonald's across the street. On the promo monitor, she sees a "live" shot of her son en route, and the voice tells her to go to a specific parked car--right now--or her son will be killed. She goes.

Remember the story about the pizza-delivery guy who robbed a bank, got caught, and told the police that he was forced to do it or a necklace he was wearing would explode? And while waiting for the bomb squad, the device went off, killing him? Evidently, so did the screen-writers for much of "Eagle Eye" recalls that bizarre scenario of an innocent forced to commit acts against their will. But that organization attached to that voice must be near-messianic in scope because it can monitor your progress by hacking into security-cams, and eases their near-escapes with constant directions and remote access to reader-boards, cell-networks, automated machinery, traffic lights, military equipment, cranes, high-tension towers, anything electronic or capable of broadcasting, right down to the X-ray machines at the airport check-points. Needless to say, there's a scene at Circuit City where this anonymous group goes to town.

It's a movie that, more than any theater announcement, compels you to turn off your cell-phone in the theater.

Who or what organization is doing this and why? Throughout the movie, I was harboring the suspicion that whatever the reasoning behind the elaborate, sometimes crazy, plot, it would not live up to the preposterous hook of the film. But it almost does, using as it center a security risks that this nation has inscribed in its Constitution--a blunder as big as lining up all your planes at Pearl Harbor. It's a scenario that's been used before in spy/suspense fiction, and "Eagle Eye" owes a lot to those writers, as well as the scribes for such diverse films as "I, Robot," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Colossus: The Forbin Project," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "2001: a Space Odyssey," "North By Northwest," "Telefon," "The Lady from Shanghai," and "The Conversation." That's quite a diverse roster of films, paranoia being their common thread.

Director D.J. Caruso helmed a previous Shia LaBoeuf box-office winner, "Disturbia," and manages to make wide-open landscapes as restrictive as the limited point-of-view of that earlier film. Sometimes too restrictive. Two highway smash-ups are shot so close that one gets no sense of the relationship of mayhem to mayhem--they could be happening in separate states for all we see. However, the strategy benefits a sequence utilizing an airport's baggage conveyorsystem--making it as dizzying as a turn through a carnival fun-house.

LaBoeuf has a bit more energy than he displayed in the "Indiana Jones" film, and Michelle Monaghan (of "Gone Baby Gone") shows she's just as capable doing action work as well. Billy Bob Thornton is wonderfully dry as an FBI agent, Rosario Dawson gets to be taken seriously as an Air Force investigator, and Michael Chiklis makes a fine Secretary of Defense.

It isn't art, but it's a good ride--a pop-corn movie with just as much shelf-life and nutrition-value, while being a nice little tumble through the history of techno-thrillers of the past thirty years.

"Eagle Eye" is a satisfying rental.